A Bum’s Rush

New Orleans, “The big easy”, a unique city warring on the extreme edges of church oriented ethics and a manic need for individual and group debauchery. It’s a place where the graft of its officials is accepted; even applauded by the majority, in the actions and reactions of their lives.

New Orleans is “The City that care forgot.” Locals like to say it refers to the carefree lackadaisical pace of the city, compared to the no-nonsense frantic tempo found throughout the rest of the country. To others it means a city of self-involvement, a place where the abuse of oneself is an art form of self-indulgence, even self-destruction.

It’s a place where a bum drops his pants to take a crap in mid-traffic, where a fat woman pushing six hundred pounds, walks back and forth on a reinforced second story balcony, doing a strip tease to the yelling and screaming mobs on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.

A place to take romantic walks along the river at night with your girlfriend, enjoying the moonlight and then laughing hysterically as a six foot five Tranny in a short bright orange skirt and heels, pops up out of the shadows with an aging five foot something pasty white fat guy, each trying to put their individual equipment back into something resembling proper storage.

Unlike Vegas, what’s in New Orleans does not necessarily stay in New Orleans, as many of the local free clinics would attest to. It’s a place tourist’s come to from all over the world, often at the expense of the locals begging or nurturing a meager existence from their visits.

Tourists come to New Orleans to gamble, have sex, eat and get drunk. It’s a place where just about anything can be had for the right price. If you’re a pedophile in the nineties this was the place to be. Abused children from all over the country and even a few from Europe came here to escape abusive homes or some other form of abuse.

They ran in packs, living in empty broken down houses easily pointed out by the ministers I worked with, who worked hand-in-hand with the Baptist and Catholic Charities. They toiled to bring three meals a day to literally thousands, while working to push back the boundaries of chaos the city had succumbed to.